3. I come now to the subject of Repetition, of which two chief forms offer themselves. One is just what the word of itself indicates; it belongs to all the faculties, but chiefly to the lower courses. I shall call it by the generic name of Repetition. The other has place principally in the higher; it is Disputation; of which a preparatory exercise, called _Concertatio_, prevails also from the lowest class of Grammar upwards.
Repetition then rehearses in full class, under various forms or modifications of that exercise, what the Professor has explained in class. Just before the close of the hour spent on his lecture, the Professor of Philosophy or Theology signifies that he is ready for questions on the matter treated; he asks sometimes an account of the lecture, and he sees that it is repeated. The revised _Ratio_ of 1832 puts it, in more general terms, thus: "He is often to require an account of the lectures, and to see that they are repeated"; and then it desires that, after the lecture, either in the class-room, or somewhere near, he remain accessible to the students for at least a quarter of an hour, to answer their questions.[227] This is all from the Constitution of Ignatius.
The Repetition, which he is to see to personally, is that which takes place in small circles of about ten students each. "At the close of the lectures let them, in parties of about ten apiece, repeat for half an hour what they have just heard; one of the students, and, if possible, a member of the Society, presiding over each party, _decuria_."[228] Neither the preliminary, nor the final, _Ratio_ demands that the Professor himself preside over any of these parties. But "those who do preside will become more learned, and will be practising to become Masters themselves."[229]
It must be admitted that the tenor of many remarks in the earlier document of 1586, shows the presence of Jesuits among the auditors to have acted on the course as a leaven and a relief; although the concurrent testimony of historians, about the Jesuit schools, indicates little or nothing there of that license of manners, such as Possevino described for us in a former chapter.[230] In a special manner, those Jesuit students, already young priests, who, having gone through their four-year course, were now reviewing in a biennium, of a fifth and sixth year, all their long studies of the higher sciences, stood ready at hand for many functions in the arena of direction and presidency, either over the repetitions or the disputations, or in the chair; to which as many of them as were needed would be officially assigned, when their private studies left them at last free.[231]